Embodiments relate to electronic document signatures. Various documents including legal, tax and financial documents must be signed for various reasons. Traditionally, a document is printed, manually signed, and then mailed, faxed, scanned, filed and/or stored as necessary. Thus, the document was initially in a digital format, a physical copy was generated for the signature, and then it was converted back to a digital format. This process can be inconvenient, time-consuming and wasteful.
It is not uncommon for the person required to sign a document to be at a different location than the person who prepared the document or the document location. Thus, in order to sign the physical document, the signor may be required to travel to the location of the document to sign a physical copy of the document or exchange various facsimiles. This also involves wasteful travel time and costs, printing and signing of documents and various facsimiles or other communication exchanges.
For example, in the context of electronic tax returns, a tax return prepared by a tax professional, accountant or an individual must be signed by the client or individual before it can be filed with a tax authority. In order to obtain a signature, an accountant may request the client or taxpayer to sign tax return documents when the client is available and before the tax return has been completed. However, signing a tax return before the tax return has been completed is not permitted by tax authorities, and it may be necessary for the client to travel to the accountant's office, require the accountant to travel to the client, or print fax documents back and forth between the accountant and the client.
Thus, in addition to being inconvenient, time consuming and wasteful, known systems and methods for requesting, writing and sending document signatures are not efficient since delays in signing can be caused for various reasons including the schedule of the signor, the signor being at a different location than the accountant or document, and not having access to a fax machine.
These shortcomings also present issues for the accountant or other person who prepared the electronic tax return or other document since the accountant may have many other clients from whom signatures must be obtained. The accountant may have to coordinate with hundreds of clients simultaneously, particularly during tax season when many clients are required to prepare and file electronic tax returns. This can be very confusing to the accountant who may not remember which clients need to sign which documents.
In an attempt to address some of these shortcomings, applications such as Autograph have been developed to allow a user to enter a signature using a smartphone and insert a signature or note into an open document. Such applications, however, have limited functionality, do not involve a sequence of communications involving a preparer of a document such as an accountant or tax professional requesting an actual signature from a client or signor, and given the manner in which they operate, do not provide for tracking status of which signatures have been requested, which signed documents have been received, and which signed documents have been the subject of subsequent action as necessary (e.g., filing a tax return). Autograph also has limitations or restrictions due to requiring a Wi-Fi network. For example, a description of Autograph provided on the APPSTORE from Apple, Inc. explains “Just sign your name, and it will appear on the screen of a nearby computer. Wi-Fi network is required!”